Award-Winning Curricula

2018 Judy Chicago Art Education Awardee, Melissa Leaym-Fernandez

Melissa Leaym-Fernandez’s research of the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection at Penn State’s Special Collections inspired the project, “To Honor Our Mothers.” Middle school students and third graders at Holmes STEM Academy in Flint, Michigan, interviewed their mothers about their life before childbirth. Students’ learned new perspectives about of the lives the women they knew as “mother.” The women shared childhood fears, people they loved and admired, dreams they had—and what made them happy in their daily life. The students chose a word or phrase and created a symbol to represent their mother as the elements of their quilt square. While one third grader referred to his mother as “hood person,” most children expressed love, admiration, and appreciation with their words and symbols on their quilt square. The completed quilt is a beautiful expression by youth about their mothers. This project provide nourishment to the students’ creative spirit despite the conditions of their lives including toxic water, school and community violence, and extreme poverty.

The Judy Chicago Art Education Award made this project possible with the generous support of Through the Flower and author Faye Kellerman. In addition, the Dreaming Zebra Foundation donated sewing machine for the project.

On behalf of Through the Flower – and the generosity of author Faye Kellerman, Leah Krueger, Jessica Provow, and Anne Baker from Virginia Beach Middle School are presented with The Judy Chicago Art Education Award in 2017 for their exemplary nine-week classroom implementation of Creating Tribute: The Judy Chicago Project.

Inspired by Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” 8th grade students in the 2017 award-winning project were presented with the challenge of identifying people that have “changed the world for the better.” In response to the first student generated list, the teachers facilitated discussions with the students asking why the predominance of White men on their list and so few women and people of color represented. The discussion motivated students to research fields of study that they are interested with a quest to learn about the women who have advanced knowledge and contributed significantly to society with their work. From their research, the students created sculptural dinner place settings with each work of art symbolic of a women and the context of her life. The students presented their art to each other and discussed the symbolism and the importance to honor through art the people who have made the world a better place. NASA scientist Kate Rubins, actress Lupita Nyong’o, Olympic gold medalist Misty May Treanor, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, Queen Elizabeth II, and artist Sandy Skoglund are just some of the women honored by the students through their art creations. Click here to download the curriculum with examples. [Photo: Fawziya Gyamfi with her place-setting honoring Lupita Nyong’o.]

Connie Lavelle received The Judy Chicago Art Education Award in 2016 for her explicit use of Judy Chicago’s participatory art pedagogy with The Dinner Party Curriculum Project Encounter 10, “The Artist’s Voice,” in teaching 12th graders who collaborated with 4th graders.

The Judy Chicago Education Award review committee was impressed with Brenna Johnson’s submission “Judy Chicago Reinvented through Soft Sculpture,” especially in her explicit use of Judy Chicago’s participatory art pedagogy with The Dinner Party Curriculum Project encounters, extending the encounters with the development of resources used in her teaching, and her narrative with examples to support analysis and description. While Johnson’s was among several that fulfilled and exceeded the criteria for the award, hers rose to the top because the curriculum, teaching, and evidence of student learning most embodied feminist goals. The award ceremony was part of the Judy Chicago Symposium held at Penn State on April 5, 2014. Click here for Brenna Johnson’s curriculum.

The award ceremony held on April 5, 2014 was part of the “Judy Chicago Symposium: Planting a Feminist Art Education Archive” held at Penn State. Left to right in photo: Judy Kovler, Brenna Johnson, Judy Chicago, Karen Keifer-Boyd. Photo by Madison Mock

In the fall of 2012, the eighth grade class of Harmony Township School took part in The Dinner Party Project. This was a two-month long interdisciplinary project between the art, technology, and language arts department that related to the big idea of extending voice through art. The twenty-nine students, along with nine teachers, investigated women’s history, feminism, culture, and art using The Dinner Party as inspiration. Click here for Jennifer Mazziotta-Walters curriculum.

Brandy Noody adapted parts of The Dinner Party Curriculum as a semester-long unit, using the enduring idea, “Art has been used throughout history to immortalize.” The unit, Heroes, included a detailed classroom facsimile of Judy Chicago’s installation, the creation of banners featuring a personal hero, a whole-class quilt project, and visits from local artists who demonstrated needlework techniques. Brandy also kept a visual journal of the semester, and noted her observations, questions, and reflections on the class.

Through in depth use of The Dinner Party Curriculum, Brandy Noody set the following curriculum goals:

to promote gender equity

to shift from product-making to meaning-making

to establish a group atmosphere

Brandy Noody describes: “I began the school year focusing on the big idea of heroes. The enduring idea I sought to instill in my students was, ‘Art has been used throughout history to immortalize.’” Essential questions addressed were:

In her Art Fundamentals class, Deborah Filbin adapted six Encounters from The Dinner Party Curriculum, creating a unit planto engage her students in a deep exploration of The Dinner Party, and its focus on the women written out of history. Deborah incorporated lessons on art criticism, the history of the second wave Women’s Movement in the 1970s, and a look at a variety of feminist art. She included an activity in which students mapped out the size of the installation The Dinner Party in the school gymnasium so they could comprehend the scale of the work. Finally, students created works honoring women who positively impacted their lives. Deborah Filbin adapted Encounters 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10. Click here for Deborah Filbin’s curriculum. Deborah Filbin prepared three presentations for her curriculum, which are linked below:

Andrea Reish created a unit called Mothers of Mother Earth. Within the unit are two lessons, Who Has Made Great Contributions to Our World, and A Feast of Women’s Contributions. She was honored with The Minx Auerbach Award for the lesson A Feast of Women’s Contributions, which she taught to 5th grade students at Muhlenberg Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Andrea Reish’s lessons are part of Encounters 2, 7, and 10.

As a Judy Chicago Art Education Collection member, you can log-in to the Collection website and search, annotate, and tag resources for teaching and research. Membership is free and provides opportunities to share experiences and learn from colleagues. Connect with the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection at Penn State and gain exclusive benefits by joining today